I was out shopping with my wife at one of those discount stores that I always assume will be closed and out of business the next time we visit. When she decided that our cart was sufficiently filled, we made our way to the check-out counters. Mrs. P methodically emptied the contents of our cart on to the counter, reexamining each item to confirm that she was making a wise purchase. While she did this, I gazed dreamily at the windows which were shielded from the afternoon sunlight by a large number of badly hand-written signs taped to each glass pane. Looking at the signs – the childlike scrawls forming crookedly-placed, unsure capital letters – I was instantly transported back 40 years... to an incident I remember as if it happened yesterday.
When my father was discharged from service in the US Navy at the end of World War II, he was hired as an apprentice meat cutter with Penn Fruit, a once-prominent, now-defunct supermarket chain in the Philadelphia area. He learned a viable trade as young man, but he longed to, one day, own his own store. A store he could preside over as "the boss" – calling the shots, offering wisdom from years of experience in the retail food purveying business and keeping his beloved meat case fully stocked with ribs and chops, roasts and steaks. As adept as he was at slicing up a side of beef, he was a poor businessman. He was bad at monetary affairs both at home and at work. He made bad choices, had bad instincts and learned nothing from his mistakes. He could cut meat like nobody's business, but when it came to being "in charge"... well, my dad wasn't an "in charge" kind of guy.
Nevertheless, when I was a senior in high school, my father negotiated to purchase a small food market in a working-class neighborhood of Philadelphia. It was a miniature version of a supermarket and my father had big plans to compete with the three actual (and busier) supermarkets that were in walking distance. The current owner was a man with a checkered background. He was well-known to have a very close association with Philadelphia organized crime. He also owned a popular cheese manufacturing company, that was most definitely a front for his other shadier dealings. Despite warnings from a hired business attorney (his actual words were "you are crazy if you do business with this guy"), my father was blinded by his own business fantasy. He ventured into a "trial period" and brought his family along for the ride. My dad made my brother and me quit our little after-school-and-weekend part-time jobs. He asked my mother to do the same thing, but she refused. Based on my dad's track record, she saw this venture going South real fast. My mom was a cashier and assistant manager at a women's clothing store. She merely cut back her hours there, informing them that she'd be back full-time when her husband's pipe dreams fell apart... and surely they would.
So, the Pincus family went to work with the current staff – a collection of the motliest of crews this side of a prison work-release program. Some of the staff would not show up for their shifts. Just plain not show up. Then come in a few days later and work as though nothing happened, not the least bit concerned about the possibility of losing their job. My father was only concerned with making his new "fresh cut meat" department look good. He also didn't have the guts to fire some delinquent kid who may or may not pull a knife on him.
My mom was made Head Cashier. My brother was Assistant Manager and worked the deli counter. I was relegated to whatever job was needed. I stocked shelves. I unloaded trucks. I ran a cash register. And, once a week, I hung the giant-size sale signs in the windows. That was quite an undertaking. I climbed up on shelving, sometimes teetering on a narrow ledge as I braced myself against the window frame, positioning the unfurled signs as straight and square as possible, then securing them with a pre-torn strip of adhesive tape. I performed this task every Thursday for the entire time I worked at my father's little retail venture.
Every Thursday but one.
My friend Alan and I drank well into the wee hours of the morning, eventually passing out in my room – me across my bed, Alan barely making to my brother's bed. (My brother was living elsewhere by the time I finished high school.) We slept like we were dead. We slept like we drank more than we should have the night before. I could have slept all day. But the sharp ring of our house phone woke me up.
It was my father.
I fumbled with the receiver, looking at it through squinty eyes. I croaked out a weak "Hello" and had to pull the phone away from my ear when my father's reply sounded like an air-raid siren through the pounding of a full-blown hangover. His words registered in my brain on a delay, but – as I understood – he was asking me to come down to the store and hang the signs in the window. I was pretty sure I had asked for the day off and I was also pretty sure that my father assured me that he would ask one of his other employees to cover for me, including the honor of hanging his precious signs. This wasn't brain surgery, fer Chrissakes! It was taping some paper to windows. The hardest thing about it was making sure the words on the signs faced outward. The problem was, every single employee in that store – before the Pincus family arrived – was an absolute moron with a capital MOR. I protested, explaining to my father that I was in no condition to climb shelving and hang signs, let alone drive to the store. He insisted, assuring me I could leave as soon as the last sign was re-hung.
Re-hung? What? "You mean the signs are already up?," I questioned. "What do you need me for?" My father answered: "You'll see when you get here." And he hung up. I had to go.
I pulled on a t-shirt and a pair of jeans. I tied my sneakers and informed Alan that I had to go to work for an hour or so. Alan grumbled something that I don't think were actual words. I went out to my car.
When I arrived at the store, I couldn't believe what I saw. Not only was every sign crooked, but every one was upside down. Several were hung upside down and backwards, with the flipped type facing the inside of the store. Not one or two. Not a few. Every. Single. Sign. Every one!
I came into the store and met my father. We didn't exchange any words. We just slowly shook our heads and rolled our eyes. I silently grabbed a roll of tape and got to work – taking down each sign, turning it around, flipping it, if necessary, and taping it – correctly – back into place. When the whole job was re-done, I handed the roll of tape back to my father and said: "See you at home." And I left.
My father never did buy that store. His lawyer finally convinced him just how bad an idea it was. The Pincuses all left the venture and we all got jobs in other places, except my mom. She went back to the clothing store full time. My father took his meat cutting skills to another chain supermarket. He never attempted to purchase his own store again.
I still laugh when I see signs in supermarket windows.
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